Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree what it is, or why it is that the whole rich panoply of human experience seems to emerge from a lump of squishy grey matter in our heads. Most agree, though, that consciousness represents a Hard Problem, and consciousness studies has emerged as a quasi-discipline over recent years, as a multidisciplinary discourse seeking to address these and other fascinating and perplexing questions.

While the arts and humanities have joined the sciences at the debating table, music has been relatively under-represented-until now. This book redresses this balance. Its 20 essays offer different takes on issues around music and consciousness, both addressing existing agendas, and introducing new ones. No single view emerges, but what the collection as a whole makes clear is that to understand consciousness we need to do much more than look at brains. Studying music makes it clear that consciousness is as much to do with minds, bodies, culture, and history. The book, which includes several chapters drawing from Eastern philosophies, also provides a corrective to any perception that the study of consciousness is a purely Western preoccupation. In addition to what it says about consciousness, the book also - and perhaps primarily - represents a new configuration of writings about music.